Lighting: What is most important?
It’s the age old question, especially when you work in educational theatre: Is it more important to make the lighting fit the show or to see the actor’s faces? Or, can you do both?
In educational theatre, mom and dad want to be able to find their kid, right? Same with youth theatre, dance recitals, etc. Lighting designers want to have the chance to make the show look spectacular and tell a great story. Directors want both. To be fair, some lighting designers want both as well, but how hard is that?
Well, it doesn’t just depend on how good your lighting designer is. Some of it is:
How many lighting instruments do you have?
Where are those instruments?
What does the set look like? How tall is it?
Can your instruments hit your actors where they are blocked?
What is your budget?
What is the setting?
Let’s look at some examples:
Well, obviously our plan was not to see the actor’s faces in this instance. This is a production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller. This scene can be difficult no matter what your venue, the ages of the actors or the technical expertise of the lighting designer. Not to mention, what the director wants to see. It is important to know when and why we don’t need to see the faces of the actors. This happens to be a middle/high school production and the actors are age 11-18. Showing pre-teens and teens about to be hung on the gallows can be rather shocking and not something that is comfortable to see. I chose to do it in silhouette. Luckily, I had a great lighting designer. Notice how close to the grid that the scaffolding was for the gallows. That also makes hitting faces difficult; especially, when your lead is 6 feet tall. So, in this case, that wasn’t an issue. This is exactly what I was looking for and my lighting designer made sure it was perfect. He was also my technical director and came up with a genius plan for the hanging (but more on that in another blog post. If you need to know about it sooner, drop me a message).
Ah, Mamma Mia. Unfortunately this show closed down on final dress rehearsal due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These two juniors didn’t have a senior show. But, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The actors, playing Sophie and Bill, were sitting on the edge of the stage singing Name of the Game. The scene takes place in the evening and I wanted them alone, looking out on the ocean, sitting on a dock. So, the actors are sitting on the edge of the stage. It’s harder than you may think to light this area, as you don’t want to light up the pit or expose the rest of the stage. I also wanted it to look like the moonlight and the ocean is reflecting off Sophie’s face. Tall order, I know. Again, a great lighting designer. The warmth in her face is obvious, however, you can’t see the water effect that was achieved with a gobo rotator in the photo. The feel of evening can make it difficult to see actor’s faces but this lighting designer achieved this without taking away from the overall look for this scene. Gorgeous.
So, if you frequent my site, you’ve seen this photo in my footer (where you can sign up with your email and get 10% off!). You will probably see this again as it is one of my favorite sets. This is The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project: Leigh Fondakowski, Stephen Belber, Greg Pierotti, Barbara Pitts, Stephen Wangh, Amanda Gronich, Sara Lambert, John McAdams, Maude Mitchell, Andy Paris, and Kelli Simpkins. It is a spectacular and heartbreaking script. My students were so committed to getting this one right, and they did. My set was mostly one color, as you can see, which is easy to light, but for a script like this (very realistic characters) it can be hard to make it exciting for a lighting designer. My advice to my designer was to tell the story through the lights. The person standing, is the focus for this scene, however, in a split second, someone else could be the focus. I didn’t want to use a spot for this except for very specific aspects of the story. My lighting designer’s use of light and shadow were masterful for the production and I couldn’t have been happier.
This was a fun show. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, steampunk carnival. I had a very specific vision of this show and my lighting designer rocked. These are masonite frames attached to the wall in the windows of the house of the theatre. Crazy, right? We have a hallway to the stage from the house of the theatre and there are openings (windows) looking over the house. The actors are standing in the hallway (one is sitting on the ledge) and the frames are lit with C7 incandescent Christmas lights (you can also use LED to make them look brighter but we liked the warmth). So, I’m sure you’re thinking, she’s really hard on her lighting designers. To be fair, my lighting designers are brilliant. For this production, my lighting designer built a light bar for the house and hung the instruments from there. Their faces were lit and it didn’t take anything away from the overall feel of the windows. Also, fyi, this photo was taken with a flash so you can’t see the true effect since the audience and wall is lit by the flash. Everything but the windows were dark. Loved this show. You’ll see more in another blog showing costumes, makeup and set. Stay tuned!
Let me know if you have questions about specific show lighting or any other aspect of production. Fill out the Contact form in the footer with your questions and comments!
